1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium, particularly to a recording medium suitable for use in ink-jet recording, an ink-jet recording method using the same, and an ink-jet recorded article.
2. Related Background Art
An ink-jet recording method attracts attention as a printing method which scarcely produces noise and can conduct high-speed printing and color printing.
As recording media used in this ink-jet recording method, there have been used, for example, paper for ink-jet recording in which a specific porous ink-receiving layer is provided on a base essentially consisting of ordinary plain paper, and transparent recording media for overhead projection (OHP) in which the same ink-receiving layer as that used in the paper for ink-jet recording is provided on a sheet essentially consisting of a synthetic plastic.
Particularly speaking on the recording media for OHP, as materials making up these media, mainly materials making up bases, there have been used films comprising a synthetic plastic such as a polyester resin, diacetate resin, triacetate resin, acrylic resin, polycarbonate resin, polyvinyl chloride resin or polyimide resin.
On the other hand, the amounts of synthetic plastic materials used in a variety of industrial fields show a tendency to increase year by year. The amount of waste synthetic plastics also increases correspondingly, and so their disposal becomes a great social problem in the world. These waste plastics are recovered to incinerate or subject to disposal by land-fills.
The incineration of the conventional synthetic plastics have often caused damage to an incinerator because of their high calorific value. In addition, many of them have generated harmful gases upon their incineration. Besides, in the disposal by land-fills, problems of maintaining places of the disposal and of adversely affecting natural environment also have come to be considerable.
Under such circumstances, the problem of waste disposal after use also has become important on articles of consumption for ink-jet recording making use of synthetic plastics with the spread thereof from the viewpoint of environmental problem or the like.
In particular, the recording media for OHP must claim adequate consideration for the waste disposal after use because their bases are made up of a synthetic plastic as described above. The conventional OHP films for ink-jet take no account of the problems of the waste disposal as described above, and so they have some fear of adverse influence on environment when they are discarded in plenty.